News

Is my personal data safe?

April 9, 2018

You have probably seen or heard many news articles about companies “data mining”, “harvesting” or “scraping” data to use for marketing (or worse!). Some Internet service providers (ISP’s) actively sell your personal data and information regarding what web sites you visit, what purchases you make, etc. You may ask “is this legal?” and the short answer is “probably” since there likely was language buried in a service agreement customers sign authorizing them to do this.

RTC does not sell or allow 3rd parties to access your personal information, but does that mean your information is safe? While we do not allow this practice with the data we hold, the websites you visit probably do. Have you ever noticed when you search for an item using Google, Facebook, eBay or another site, you suddenly see ads pop up for the item you searched for on other websites you visit? Those sites have paid the other site to gather data for marketing to you, perhaps without your knowledge. RTC cannot control what other companies do with their data, but you can by controlling the privacy settings on the sites you visit and by regularly clearing the browsing history and cookies from you preferred search engines.

It’s probably good advice to remind yourself “if you put it on the internet, it’s not private anymore”.